From January to September 2025, government sin tax collections on cigarettes and vapor products (e-cigarettes) rose to ₱106 billion, up from ₱84 billion during the same period last year, former Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Romeo Lumagui reported to the House Ways and Means Committee.
“We’ve seen our comparative collections from January to September 2025 compared with the year 2024, and we’ve seen an increase of about more than ₱20 billion pesos [on our sin tax collection on cigarettes]. From ₱84 billion collection from excise tax on tobacco products last year, we were able to collect about ₱106 billion for this year,” Lumagui said.
He attributed the increase to “aggressive enforcement activities in connection with excisable articles” by the BIR, noting, “We’ve done a lot of nationwide raids in these periods.”
Lumagui also explained that lower excise taxes on vapor products encouraged smokers to shift to e-cigarettes instead of quitting entirely.
“The rates of excise tax on vapor products is much, much lower than the rates of excise tax on cigarette products. So, if we have an increase of smoking incidents but the smoking pertains to vapor products and your excise tax rates on vapor products compared with cigarettes is very much lower, then definitely the collection of excise tax would be much smaller,” he said.